Verma firms acted as Agusta brokers?

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Updated: Feb 15, 2013, 11.46 AM IST

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Controversial arms dealer Abhishek Verma is back in the headlines. On a day when a Delhi court denied Verma and his wife interim bail in a case involving alleged violations of the Official Secrets Act, television channel Times Now cited documents to suggest that his firms had acted as deal-brokers for AgustaWestland, though not in the VVIP helicopter deal.

New Delhi: Controversial arms dealer Abhishek Verma is back in the headlines. On a day when a Delhi court denied Verma and his wife interim bail in a case involving alleged violations of the Official Secrets Act, television channel Times Now cited documents to suggest that his firms had acted as deal-brokers for AgustaWestland , though not in the VVIP helicopter deal.

Times Now said that Swiss lobbying firm NJT Sarl had sent an email to the office of the CEO of AgustaWestland and its parent Italian firm Finmeccanica, Giuseppe Orsi, in June 2009, offering its services in helping the Italian arms manufacturer secure business in India. The mail, dated June 19, 2009, sent by one Christian Curato said NJT Sarl was acting on behalf of Atlas Defence Systems, a Mauritius-based firm that was part of Verma's Atlas group. It boasted of how its "allies" had closed defence deals worth $5.5 billion in the previous four years.

Promising to "provide political exposure in India at the highest level" and asserting it had strong allies in the government , media and "corridors of power" , NJT sought a meeting with Orsi. A series of emails exchanged between Orsi's office and NJT culminated in the legal head of AgustaWestland , Alaimo Vincenzo, suggesting to the Swiss firm that a formal commission contract be drawn up and signed.

The contract, the report said, was finally signed in August 2009, not with the Swiss firm but with another alleged Verma front company, Ganton Ltd, based in New York. The president of Ganton Ltd, US, C Edmonds Allen, signed the contract. The contract specified that Ganton would be paid an 8% commission on the sale of helicopters to the Delhi Police and 15% on the price of all spare parts that would be provided under the contract. As it happened, the deal with the Delhi Police finally did not go through.

The Times Now report also cited a letter allegedly written by lawyer Gautam Khaitan on behalf of his law firm O P Khaitan & Co to Atlas Interactive Ltd (AIL) in Mauritius, another Verma-owned firm. It said that Khaitan in this letter told AIL that his firm was holding accounts of $145,000 each on behalf of AIL and that he would "dispose" of these funds as per instructions once he returned to Delhi. This, the Times Now report said, not only proved that Khaitan was very much linked to arms dealers but also raised questions about what the $290,000 was meant for and how it was "disposed" of.